'Obamacare' and the Right's Own Private Universe

WASHINGTON — Earlier today, we looked at how the backlash narrative in the Trayvon Martin case has begun to coalesce. In no little time, this story will be treated as fact, and we will hear that poor George Zimmerman had to blast away before Trayvon could get back on his cellphone and call the rest of his fellow New Black Panthers to come and join in the general stomping. (And if you want to see the most singularly crap-tastic attempt to change this particular subject, check out the new Washington Free Beacon, which lands a scooperific piece of journalmalism.) The best place to see the end product of all this effort was among the protestors on the steps of the Supreme Court this morning. It is a small miracle of mass communication that complete and total bullshit is so quickly and easily converted into incontrovertible fact out of which can be created a world of public events completely real, but completely divorced from what the rest of us recognize as reality.

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Take poor Sandra Fluke. It is now an article of faith on the Right that she asked all of us to pay for "her" birth control. "Real women pay for their own birth control," the crowd on the steps chanted today, and there were more than a couple of signs warning her not to expect "our" money to pay for her obviously overindulgent sexytime.

Of course, Fluke did nothing of the sort. Rush Limbaugh gorped up a great mass of oxycodone-laden mucus for a week on the topic, and he's been bleeding sponsors ever since. The argument has been dismissed, debunked, and demolished. The "fact," however, lives on in the debate, just as though it was ever true in the first place.

Also, today, folks told me that Obamacare "finances abortions." (It doesn't.) I heard that it will mandate "euthanasia." (It won't.) Even the death panels got a workout again. We have half the country living in its own universe of belief, with its own history, its own politics, and its own physical laws. It's like running elections against the anti-gravity party. It is not healthy for any of us.